Monday, 30 November 2009

Return to WINGSTREET

Over a year ago I tried WingStreet'sforay into take-out deep fried chicken wings. I wasn't overly impressed. The wings were fairly big and meaty for take-out wings, but the main heat sauce I went with, Heat Seeker, was just to HFCS-sy for my liking.

I also was not impressed with the Canadian website and inability to find WingStreet locations or info in Canada. I contacted them to discuss this and I was told by Mr Munshaw of Customer Communication Representative of Yum! Restaurants International (Canada) he would:

So here we are in the closing months of 2009, and Pizza Hut/WingStreet Canada has a new website (for a little while now). Your welcome Canada. And they have restructured their flavours too.

Cajun

Spicy BBQ

Honey BBQ

Garlic Parmesan

Spicy Asian

Buffalo Mild / Buffalo Medium / Buffalo Burning Hot

Totally Teriyaki seems to have been replaced by spicy Asian (but that might just be a name change) and they added Garlic Parmesan. And the Mild & Heat Seeker have been replaced by their 3 tier heats of Buffalo.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, other than this blog is dedicated to all things wings, a commercial came out a little while ago with the other 'Wing King' Drew Cerza, and I finally added it to the blog the other week. A few people left comments and e-mailed, especially my friend Ricky P, said I should give them another shot. Well, I decided to give them a second chance.

I went into a Pizza Hut that had a WingStreet for lunch. My waitress Darlene was friendly but a little awkward ( I think she was new, plus not many people pass on the lunch buffet). I had a Mountain Dew to drink, and it wasn't too long before my wing orders arrived.

I really wanted to do a scientific experiment to see if these were good Buffalo wings. I went with just one sauce, the Burning Buffalo Hot. But WingStreet has 3 ways to have your wings: Traditional (deep fried straight up), Breaded, and Bone-Out (ie Boneless wing).

I went with the first two. Let the science begin! The above photo is actually a poor representation. You cannot really tell which is which just by looking, and most of the breaded were actually bulkier (due to breading, duh). But the wings over all were a pretty good size, the smallest being Medium, the rest large. All were very meaty.

Above is a breaded wing. The coating was very crunchy, very thick. One or two wings like this were decent, but eventually all I could taste was the breading. It overpowered the sauce even. I asked whether they were breaded in house or came frozen this way, and as suspected, came frozen pre-breaded. But they were big.

Above is a the Traditional. Just like a Buffalo wing. Deep fried, crispy skin. The way a Buffalo wing should be.

On to the sauce itself. It won Best Hot Traditional Wing Sauce (2007) @ National Buffalo Wing Festival, so that must mean something, right? Well it was a unique take on the traditional sauce. A little viscous in texture, but still slightly HFCS-ey. There was a butter/cayenne hot flavour there too. But as for heat, it was definitely a medium.

Oh, and I got a lot of sauce. A lake. Super wet wings. No one complaining here.

Overall, the Traditional Hot Buffalo were good wings. The breaded ones were just too much for my liking. The sauce is decent and there's lots of it - but these wings aren't gold medal in my opinion. Eating in ensured crispy wingettes. I don't think I would be ordering them for delivery. Overall, my key word is decent. Not better than a pub, but better than a frozen wing.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

mmm love wings, only served with beer. my first job was at a pizza hut express back in '06. We served chicken wings that were "frozen from a bag, deep fried in the a&w fryer next door, tossed in a bowl with franks red hot sauce". best sh-t ever.